Freed American Relates Tale of Fear, Laughter

It was late at night, five days after gun-toting guerrillas seized him and hundreds of others at a cocktail party at the Japanese ambassador’s residence here.

At last, Kris Merchrod was being released. But as he gazed for the last time at his fatigue-clad captors, the American aid worker didn’t think of the lack of food, the nights spent on the floor, his worries about being killed in an army assault on the compound. His concerns were for the young rebels.

“I slapped them on the shoulder and gave them some advice on finding a good mediator,” Merchrod recalled on Monday of those who held him.

Released late Sunday, along with the six other Americans, he related a bizarre tale of captivity in which fear was mixed with laughter and learning. His account also illustrates that, while some hostages suffered depression, thirst and exhaustion, others seem to have adapted rapidly to the experience--to almost have enjoyed getting to know the rebels.

Merchrod, 53, was attending the cocktail party at the compound last Tuesday with his wife when the rebels seized the white-colonnaded residence. Within a few hours, the guerrillas told the women that they would be freed. “That was perhaps the hardest part, saying goodbye,” recalled Merchrod, a contract worker for the U.S. Agency for International Development. “The wives didn’t want to say goodbye, but we wanted them to get away while the going was good.”

But the hostages soon realized that the rebels were not going to hurt them. In fact, the guerrillas were happy to debate with them.

So, for days, the 39 captives in Merchrod’s group--industrialists, university professors and former Peruvian ministers--sat on the dining-room floor with the guerrillas, discussing Peru’s electoral system, political parties and privatization of state industries, Merchrod said.

To the captives’ surprise, the rebels turned out to agree with them on some points. “It wasn’t the old debate of ‘Businesses should be expropriated,’ ” recalled Merchrod in a telephone interview. “We talked about privatization, the rate of privatization and what types of industry should be privatized.”

To pass the time, the captives also vacuumed, gave each other lectures on their professional specialties--and engaged in uproarious rounds of joke-telling. “The first two nights, guards from the [rebels] came in and asked us to keep it down to a dull roar,” chuckled the Norwalk, Conn., native. “We made so much noise laughing at jokes, they said the enemy on the outside would hear and know where we were.”

Not that everything was funny. Merchrod and the others feared the Peruvian army or police might conduct an assault against the guerrillas in the building. If a fire had broken out, he said, the captives could not have escaped through the barred windows.

Merchrod was the only American held in his group and didn’t see the six U.S. diplomats during his captivity. Conditions seem to have varied between the groups of hostages held in different parts of the residence, with some released captives later relating grim stories about the filth and lack of food.

But Merchrod emphasized that the rebels didn’t single out Americans. “Their main goal was to capture people who were important to the [Peruvian] government,” he said.

It was Sunday morning when Merchrod learned that he would be released. After waiting for hours, he was led from the residence with 224 other hostages. Finally free, he sucked in the clean night air.

He declined to get on a bus with other hostages headed to a hospital for checkups. Instead, he strode through a knot of journalists and hailed a cab.

“I just wanted to come home,” he said softly. “My wife had watched this on TV. She knew I was out,” he recalled. “She was there on the curb when I arrived, with our daughter Monica--and there we were.”

The low-key Merchrod isn’t one for big celebrations, he says. But, after five days as a hostage, he allowed himself one luxury. “This morning, we pretended it was a weekend. I made waffles with sesame seeds, my usual Saturday morning thing.”